THE HEARTS NEAR TROUBLESOME CREEK

by Sarah Mackey Kirby

Eastern Kentucky has long been neglected. After recent floods, locals are relying on each other yet again. —CNN, August 9, 2022

beat loss,

beat wood slat rubble,

beat morning Appalachia.

 

It’s patch-up and fix-up

and clean-up and move-on

time again. The mountains

know these folks. The ones

in old boats, still combing

flooded neighborhoods

with their own homes in shambles.

Teachers without classrooms and

workers taking charge throughout the night.

 

Sorting clothes and preparing supply

boxes in shelters. Manning the grills.

Handing out water bottles.

Somehow landing on their feet

 

as they know to do. The coal mine jobs

lost but the sickness those wrought.

The lack of work to replace them.

The stubborn terrain. Two parties that’ve

fought to be the one who gets to use them.

Same generations of neglect. Different name.

Humble people, caricatured through time,

whose character shows despite their pain.

 

Nurses care for patients. Art and music bring

the light. The breeze blows through soaring pines.

And when the world tires and the cameras leave

and the mud dries and the current-event poems

become current only for them, they’ll keep asking

their neighbors, “Y’all need somethin’?”

Talking distinct Eastern Kentucky, offering help.

Saying, “Bless your heart” to those who’ve never

once tried to understand. Picking up what’s left of

family pictures and damaged front porch swings.

Together. Always rebuilding.

Sarah Mackey Kirby grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. She is the author of the poetry collection The Taste of Your Music (Impspired, 2021). Her work appears in Chiron Review, Impspired Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review, The New Verse News, Ploughshares, Third Wednesday Magazine, and elsewhere. She holds an MA in Teaching and a BA in Political Science from the University of Louisville. She and her husband spend their time in Kentucky and Ohio.

THE HOLLER

by Tricia Knoll

The flood of July 28, 2022 was not a natural disaster. To imply this flood, along with so many other weather-borne catastrophes plaguing our world, is a natural disaster is to say three things: We don’t know why it happened, we don’t know how it happened and we don’t know how to prevent the next one. But we do know the answers to these questions. We’ve known them for some time. A combination of unfettered capitalism, environmental degradation through extraction economies and government indifference or plain inaction have borne a land in these hills ripe for weather related disasters and left behind communities with little to no defenses against them. Charles Calhoun, Courier Journal, August 16, 2022

Since 1958, the amount of precipitation during heavy rainstorms has increased by 27 percent in the Southeast, and the trend toward increasingly heavy rainstorms is likely to continue. – What Climate Change Means for Kentucky, EPA, August 2016

When you have always lived in the holler

and the mortgage come due or the river

trickles your worries downstream, you accept

barking dogs, loose chickens in the road

and rusted trucks in the side yard. Kittens

thrive for a while. You know the business

and love affairs of neighbors and grandmothers.

Who has work and who doesn’t. 

Children know barefoot, few strangers,

and security in familiar. Ponies

run lean and the women leaner, 

mountains tall and a gravel lane narrow

—funnels for floodwater.  

 

You could say the name came from hollows

but you don’t. You honor salty talk while

a warming planet has its say with

record rains few had time to measure.

 

Refrigerators float and homes sweep down

to wrap around trees. You can scrabble

up a hillside, but like so many places

what grandparents built is gone. 

The holler has only one way out

 

and yours will never be the same. 

Tricia Knoll does not live in a holler but knows that everywhere is vulnerable to climate change.